Hutterites

Hutterites are a group of persons who are members of this Anabaptist and pacifist religion that evolved as an outgrowth of the Protestant reformation of the early 1500's.

This religious group was named after Jacob Hutter, who was burned to death at the stake in 1536 as a heretic by order of the Holy Roman Emperor, a Hapsburg King.

The early Hutterites lived in Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, Transylvania (then Hungary) and Wallachia (southern Romania) before continuing on to two major locations in European Russia (now the Ukraine). They emigrated to South Dakota starting in 1873 and then went elsewhere to Canada about 1918 and later some returned to America.

Many Hutterite descendants now live in small colonies in western Canada (Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan) and the north central and western United States (Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Washington State.

Hutterite preachers have been diligent in recording the family histories and vital events of their colonies in church books. This is a case of genealogy helping genetics research.

Hutterites stop schooling at 15. They have very small class sizes and some schools use the Montessori(I will talk about this in my next post) method.

This means Hutterite children have an almost zero exposure to Subliminal Distraction.

Researchers are saying that this could be the reason why Hutterite Colonies have very low incidents of Schizophrenia.

Mamzar

A bunch of 7 of us today were let loose(?) at Mamzar. After our clinics today we left for the park. WahdaMuslimah(WM) was to get our food and meet us there. In the meanwhile, Shehzadii drove us to the place.

When we got there, we had some time extra before WM got there, so we decided to have some fun at the corniche side outside the park. The water was beautiful. Amazing in fact. It were as though someone had colored the water before we got there. There was the first band of water (along side the shore) which was crystal clear, we could see right through to the bottom. The second band after that was colored green, a very peaceful bluish green. The third band stretched to the horizon was colored blue, the most amazing blue you'll ever see. SubhanAllah. Nature's beauty.

Once WM got there, with the pizzas from Pizza Hut, we all packed into her car and started off the great day. We chose a nice shaded location, the green patch closest to the sea side (for the veiw). I never saw crows in UAE until today. There was a parrot we spotted and a very pretty blue colored one. And yeah we dug in. We were all very hungry (although we had snacks on our way to the park). Oh and we had guests at the picnic too - ANTS! There is no picnic without ants. Not only were they attacking our food, but us too! We observed a couple of them walking away with pieces from our pizza (bread crumbs, pepparoni). We witnessed the proof that they can actually carry 20(?) times their weight.

Lunch was done and Shehzadii had to leave. And then there were 6.

We were supposed to drive upto to the beach side of the place. But guess who got behind the wheel? ME! :D [P.S. I dont have a license yet!]. I drove pretty well MashaAllah (hehe I'm not boasting, this is what my friends told me - I did think so too though). Oh and I passed my greatest fear! The round-a-bouts. And then another of my friend (who also dint have a license yet took her turn). She was a bit fidgety at first. But she got the hang of it. :D

So we were finally at the beach side. The water was really really really cold compared to the warmth we were trying to escape by picking the shaded spots. The waves werent as high as they were the last time I had been there. Oh and by the way, salt water in your eyes burns(?) your eyes really bad. And then we met this whole bunch of arab kids - very naughty ones. They really loved WM because she was the only one who could speak arabic. They were all over her - literally. On boy got on her shoulders and kept asking her to stand up. Another 1 or 2 of them started pulling at her hair, and I think also pushing her head into the water at the same time. They also tried splashing water onto us. Then they began making mud balls and throwing them at us. Getting mud in your hair isnt very pretty. Another one grabbed at my friends leg and kept tugging at it. We ended up running away from them though. Oh and the moment we got out of the water and cleaned up, we were all starving. This is supposed to be a false sense of hunger, whereas you arent really hungry. It is when you have water in your ears, and that stimulates your vagus nerve, which in turn makes you think you are hungry.

Oh and then there was the park side. The little kids inside us were out. We were on the swings and this bar thing (what do you call it?) where you go all topsy turvy on it. And then there was this new thing I had never seen in my life before. Four sticks, one person on each end and then you just go up and down on it. It is sorta like a see-saw, except these are bars hung down from the see-saw on which you sit. The best part though were the monkey bars. As a kid I used be on them all the time. And I dint think I would be able to do it again. But I was. And I managed to convince everyone else to try it too, and they all managed to do it. :D

Another friend of mine was recently has a skateboard craze after she watched a movie named Lords of something(?I dont remember). So she was learning for the first time. I had tried it before but never got on it again after that because it was too scary. Today I managed a little distance with WM holding onto me. lol. Although WM and the others managed to learn quite a bit. MashaAllah. Quick learners.

And then I guess we just packed up and left. None of us had had so much activity all in one day in the recent past. MashaAllah we really really worked out.

P.S. It was ladies day at the park. So it was kinda like an advantage for us.

Jehovah's Witness

I was doing some research on Jehovah's Witness and found some pretty interesting facts about them. They consider themselves to be the 'pure' or at least the purest form of Christianity. Here are some of their beliefs in breif.

There is one God Almighty, a Spirit Being with a body but not a human body. There is one God and no Trinity.

Christ is a Savior, not God incarnate. He was not a God-man rather a being inferior to God. He was a 'created' spirit being. He was God's only begotten son, sent to earth as a perfect human being. They also believe in Christ having sacrificed his life to redeem mankind of sin and evil.

God created the heavens and the earth in six days (each day equal to thousands of years). They reject the theory of evolution and refuse to believe in it.

Souls die when the body dies. No soul exists after the death of a person. The dead are then resurrected by Jesus Christ. Those who have done righteous deeds will be rewarded an everlasting life on a 'paradise earth'. Those who were unrighteous will simply die and cease to exist. There is no concept of torment or hell or any form of punishment for the wrong doers.

Satan and his demons roam the earth to tempt man to sin, which God allowed as a part of the test of our faith in Him.

They condemn celebration of birthdays and celebration of other holidays or festivities originated from other religions.

God has allowed suffering (self-inflicted or through means of Satan) so that mankind can discover that God's rule is better than independent human rule. It is a part of the challenge of Satan's claim that people would turn away and curse God when under pressure.

Abortion is a sin.

Homosexuality is a sin.

Men are the head of the household. Women are meant to submit themselves to their husbands. The men are to give respect to their wives in return.

Divorce is permitted only under very specific circumstances. Re-marriage is disliked unless the divorce was due to adultery.

They are not to serve in the armed forces or form any alliance with the government. Allegiance must be only to the Kingdom of Christ.

Blood transfusion is not permitted for them. They believe that God has said the soul is in the blood. Also, ingesting of blood is prohibited. God alone has the right to their blood.

Conference Today

So we had a conference today about 7 cases of Kyphoscoliosis in Lateral Gaze Palsy reported in Iran between the years 1996 - 2000.

Lateral Gaze Palsy is a rare disease which was only recognised recently (1970 I think). So far there have been only 62(?) reported cases in the world. Most of which have been found to be localized in Middle Eastern countries (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Tunisia(?)).

In lateral gaze palsy, the patient is unable to move his eyes sideways, i.e. towards left side or right side. The patient however can move the eyes in the vertical directions, i.e upwards and downwards. It has been found to be associated with Chromosome 19 mutations.

Kyphosis is an exaggerated forward bending of the spine. Whereas scoliosis is the exaggerated sideways bend of the spine. Kyphoscoliosis is a combination of the two together (forward and sideways bend).

All the 7 cases happened to be related to each other because of the extensive inter-family marriages. Lateral gaze palsy is known to be of autosomal recessive type of inheritance. This means that the parents of the affected do not have the disease do not have the disease but are only carriers. And only when two carriers come together can the disease be inherited by their offsprings.

One of the cases, was misdiagnosed as a condition called Torticollis, because lateral gaze palsy was that uncommon. Torticollis is a condition where the patient is unable to move his head to one side, due to a defect in the muscle called sterno-cleido-mastoid. The kid that was mis-diagnosed was actually operated on for torticollis when she was a little baby.

Anyways, the seminar was pretty good and given by Dr. Farid GhasemZadeh Orthopedic Surgeon in Iranian Hospital-Dubai. The 7 reported cases were the cases that he came across during his residency period in Iran.

Chocolate and Women

WOW! Chocolate is indeed another miracle. No matter how moody you are, no matter how stressed out you are, no matter what has gone wrong in your life, there is nothing that a little chocolate cant fix.

Oh my, I had the loveliest(?) ice cream today, with a LOT of chocolate in it. I feel like I'm on a high on it. Although the cold kinda like did trigger something that could stir up into a migraine.

Anyways, 95% of the women out there would probably say they love chocolte and couldnt live without it. Why I said 95% and not 99% is because I have met women who dont really like chocolate all that much. Which is kinda weird. And I dont get why.

Werther Effect

Werther effect is a term used to describe 'imitation' or 'copycat' suicide. The term was coined after the Goethe novel "Die Leiden des Jungen Werther" in 1774 which encouraged young men to take their lives like the novel's hero 'Werther'. In the novel, Werther shot himself after a failed love affair. Soon after the novel was published there were many reports of young men using the same method to commit suicide.

There have been two such recent cases reported in the newspaper which occured in UAE. One man killed himself after stabbing his wife and 4 kids to death. The second man cut the veins of his throat and hands and locked himself up in the trunk of his car.

After these cases were reported, suicidal tendencies increased drastically. The psychatric hospital said it got a huge number of cases who had suicidal tendencies after reading about these cases.

Interesting as it may seem, its kinda creepy and scary as well. It follows a principle of suggestion. Its like the people who committed the suicide are kinda like suggesting their ideas to the other people out there, who for some reason or another may have been going through a period of depression at that point o their life, and these ideas remain in their head until they actually decide to try them out.